Marketing: Elegant E-Mail

CRM. We’ve heard this acronym plenty of times, and, yes, there are usually a bunch of zeroes hanging out with an idea made up of three letters. But I have good news—by borrowing the C and the R, you can save almost two-thirds the next time CRM’s three-letter-company calls you.

How? Because it’s your customer relationship, and the simplest and most effective way to manage it is right under your nose. It’s e-mail. Let’s stop wasting time and start learning how to use it without spending $50K.

It’s 2008, and there’s a reason your bank and all the people you get bills from want you to sign up for e-mail statements: it’s bloody expensive getting in touch with you every month. Postage rates are ridiculous these days, and so are the paper and envelopes you’re printing on. You already pay to have Internet access, so stop using the postal meter, and send your correspondence via e-mail. Put links in it to your products, your services, and your Web site.

With paper correspondence, your customers have to read your message and remind themselves to come back to you. By replacing all of it with e-mails and links, you have the opportunity to grab them and do business right then.

Use your insights
Now that you’ve thought of all the different ways you’re going to stop using paper and start using e-mail, it’s important to not get ahead of yourself. You have already struck gold, and you don’t need software or a consultant to tell you where it is. You have a business that has customers. By modifying a few office procedures, you can begin collecting their e-mail addresses. If you already have these, all you need to do is devote 100% of your focus on them.

You have the best insight into what your customers like, dislike, and want. Focus all of your e-mail messages on this.

Many businesses make the mistake of investing money to try to get as many new e-mail addresses as possible, mainly from people they haven’t done business with or even tried to market to. They install expensive software and hire costly people to aggregate data, or they pay large sums of money to organize their current e-mail addresses.

Good for them; better for us. Since you are facing your base and focusing 100% on the people you are already doing business with, you are much better off than your competitors. You have a customer who feels you are attentive, present, and ready to act. Meanwhile, your competitors have an empty wallet, a bunch of e-mail addresses, and tons of messages going to spam folders.

They do not have the most powerful tool—your customer’s word of mouth. Don’t let someone charge you to tell you otherwise.

Follow the rules
Your new e-mails must follow rules. Let’s keep things simple:

• Always send a test e-mail to yourself and an AOL e-mail address.
• Only e-mail people who want to receive your e-mails.
• Make your company name the sender.
• Keep your e-mail subject-lines to nine words or less.
• The less text in your e-mail, the better.
• If you are sending an account statement, place a link to view it on your Web site so you can get them in the door and market other facets of your company.
• At the top of the e-mail, ask them to please add you to their address book to prevent your e-mail from getting caught in their bulk folder.
• Keep your e-mail layout within the same color and design scheme as your Web site.
• Always send a text version.
• Do not e-mail your customer twice in one day.
• Don’t hire anyone who tries to charge you for telling you these rules.